


knowing i'd lie for you; thinking i'd die for you

by buckynatalia



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Raven Reyes, F/M, Game of Thrones AU, Non-Graphic Smut, Past Finn Collins/Raven Reyes, Women In Power
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-07 15:53:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7720768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckynatalia/pseuds/buckynatalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she first meets Bellamy Baratheon, Princess Raven Martell isn't expecting anything out of his alliance except revenge. But as they travel together, moving through Dorne and up into the Stormlands, sleeping under the stars every night, they find themselves trusting each other more and more every day. Whatever happens, they'll face it together. No matter what.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> fanfic trailer  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYK3RNI5Mww
> 
> picspam  
> http://lexasghost.tumblr.com/post/146755224661/game-of-thrones-au-martellraven-x

Raven Martell watched her people from her palace up on the hill, silk dress pooling around her. There were miles and miles of crooked houses and narrow alleyways, people sitting on their stoops and watching their children play in the street. The sun was washing everything with golden light. 

It was a good night, the kind of soft and colorful evening that Dorne was known for. A night just like all the others. Later, there would be drinking and laughing and people gathering around bonfires in the street. 

And some small part of her wished to join their revelry.

And some small part of her wanted to place her crown on the bedside table and run until her legs gave out. 

“My lady, there’s someone here to see you,” her handmaiden’s voice rang out from the doorway. So much for running into the dunes like a madwoman. “They came all the way from Westeros.”

Raven glanced over her shoulder. “Who are they?”

“Said, his name is King Bellamy of the House Baratheon.” 

“Fucking Westerosi bastards,” Raven muttered. 

“Pardon, my lady?” 

“I said I’ll be there in a moment.”

____

 

Bellamy Baratheon didn’t look at all like Raven had expected. She thought he’d be a grizzled and misshapen old man, not tall and broad-shouldered with long eyelashes like a girl’s. There was a stag sigil on his chest. He watched her carefully, eyes on hers, never straying. 

Raven sat on the oversized golden throne, sandaled feet dangling inches from the floor. 

“Why have you come here?” She demanded. 

“It’s an honor to meet you too, Princess Raven,” he said smoothly. “My name is Bellamy of House Baratheon, and I’m here to talk to you about forming an alliance.”

“An alliance.”

“We need you," he said. "You Martells are known to be fierce and resilient warriors. Your men would be a welcome addition to the Baratheon army. We’ll need all the force we can get if we hope to march on King’s Landing.”

"You want me to help you wage war on the Lannisters," Raven drawled. Her dress was turmeric yellow, fluttering when she shifted on the throne. "Tell me, what do I gain from this? Because it seems as if you're trying to involve Dorne in a squabble we have no reason to be involved in."

“This involves all of us,” said Bellamy, taking a step closer to her. “They’ve declared war on House Baratheon. If we don't stop them, the Lannisters and their friends will be after you next, Raven, and I've seen what they can do. They'd burn whole cities to the ground so they can rule the rubble."

"Or they won't," she said, tilting her head to the side as if challenging him. "Us Martells, we don't stick our noses where they don't belong. Safer that way." 

Raven frowned. "And you didn't answer my question.”

"I promise you,” Bellamy said, “if we win this war, I'll give you anything and everything you want."

 

“Anything, huh?” 

Bellamy nodded. "I can give you gold, more land, spices and fine cloth and sharper weapons. Or your share of the kingdom."

“I want my father back,” said Raven, mouth twisting. For a moment, the air stood still, the men turned voiceless. "Have you heard of him? Jacopo Martell, Prince of Dorne -- He tried to make a peace treaty with the Lannisters and they cut his head off. Can you bring him back?”

"No," He stared at her for a moment. “What’s done is done. But the future is whatever you make it. I can give you revenge, Raven, and I think you've been wanting that for awhile now."

"Maybe I have.”

Raven stood, coming down off her throne and slowly approaching Bellamy. So close that Bellamy could smell the jasmine that perfumed her hair. Inches away. He didn't flinch. Raven’s eyes raked over his body, from his boots to the tip of his crown.

"You must be tired from your journey. Get some rest," she said. Her burning eyes ticked back onto his. "In the morning you tell me exactly how we're going to tear the Lannisters apart. Piece by piece. Stone by stone."

For the first time in weeks, Bellamy smiled.


	2. Chapter 2

"Love would kill us in our sleep  
just to get inside of us."  
— Caitlyn Siehl, from Golden

_______

 

Raven jolted awake. There was a thin layer of sweat covering her body, silk sheets tangled around her like a vise. 

In her dreams there’d been something following her. Something dark and clawed, tearing at her hair, right on her heels no matter how fast she ran. There had been voices, too, all blurred together. She remembered a small boy with a rasp to his voice -- almost like Finn’s. 

It wasn’t good to linger on nightmares. She knew that. But still her mind churned on, overheated and feverish. Maybe it was her body sweating out the last of her demons, cleansing her. 

It was nothing to worry about. 

Raven rolled out of bed and pulled a robe on over her chemise, tying it tightly in front of her. It was the kind of morning where everything lay still -- the sun hadn’t even risen yet and the entire city was awash in silence. 

Raven padded outside into the palace’s gardens. She walked along a narrow stone path through the sweet-smelling jasmine bushes, running her hands over the smooth little leaves. Raven picked one perfect white blossom, tiny as her pinky nail. 

And crushed it between her fingers. She felt the sticky perfume of it soak into her skin. 

Raven walked until she reached the edge of the garden. There was a wall made of red stone. And beyond it, the desert stretched on and on, and if Raven didn't know better she would have thought it endless. 

But she did know better. Dorne was only a small part of the wide world. There were places where everything was green and flowers sprung from the earth readily. Farther north, shining mountains and the shifting raging sea. There were lands where there was only snow. 

And then King Bellamy’s Stormlands. There, she’d heard that the forest swallows children whole, never to be seen again, and the moss grows on the forest floor two feet deep. She wanted to see it for herself. This mystical place where the sun only shone when it wanted to.  
And some part of her didn't want to leave Sunspear. A stubborn childlike part of her that wanted to spend her whole life soaked in the sunshine, eating mangoes off the trees in her garden. 

But that wasn’t how Raven wanted to be remembered. No one wrote songs about a princess that did nothing at all. Raven turned and began to walk towards the palace, towards the boy king wearing a crown of stag’s horns. 

Towards whatever the gods had in store for her. 

 

——

 

Raven arranged for them to meet in a huge unused dining hall. 

Bellamy sat across the table from her, leaning forward on his elbows. The room was warm and full of people -- his men and hers. The pale sun shone through the windows, casting strange shapes on the floor, illuminating half of Bellamy’s face. 

He looked younger with all of yesterday’s dust washed away. His crown was sitting crookedly on his head, as if it had been placed among his curls hastily and without thought. 

Bellamy cleared his throat.

“They’ve done us wrong. They’ve taken too much, and now they’ll pay for it.” 

Bellamy’s jaw tensed. For a moment, Raven wondered what was taken from him. He’d been hurt enough to become flush with simmering anger whenever he spoke of the Lannisters. He’d been hurt enough to travel all the way to Dorne just to fall at her feet and ask for an army. 

“Tell me everything,” Raven told him. 

“What?”

“I want you to tell me everything you plan to do. I’ll listen.” 

He nodded tightly and began to speak, said that he had already amassed an army of the strongest men in the Stormlands and the surrounding territories. It wasn’t enough. But with the Dornish army, it could be. 

He said that if they trained their men to fight as a monolith, always communicating, never wavering, there was a chance that they could take King’s Landing within the next few years. 

Raven didn’t trust him, exactly, but when he spoke it stirred something inside her. 

Raven could see herself living this dream he was spinning; following Bellamy into battle, watching as he took the throne. King Bellamy was born for this -- conquering and wandering and convincing. She could see that now. 

Raven leveled her gaze on him. “What you’re talking about, the joining of armies, House Baratheon and House Martell working in unison -- that would require a lasting alliance.” 

“Yes, it would,” he glanced down at his hands, folded on the table in front of him. “Marriage is the best way to affirm an alliance between two houses. You could rule beside me, Raven, you could have Dorne and all of Westeros in the palm of your hand.” 

Raven felt something in her chest tighten. 

There was a murmuring in the room, a shifting of feet. 

Raven could refuse. Send King Bellamy Baratheon on his way, his group of Westerosi men riding off into the sand dunes never to be seen again. And she could keep living in her palace up on the hill. She could watch over her people and wake up every morning to train with her knives and daggers, knowing it was all for nothing.

Bellamy was studying Raven’s face intently.

Raven imagined the Stormlands, trees growing too close together, thick swaths of mist down in the valleys. A stone castle nestled in the center of it. Raven could be his Lady Baratheon, she could wear his stag’s horns in her hair, she could do anything if it meant she’d get her retribution. 

“I’m in,” Raven said, swallowing hard. Her uncertainty coiled inside her, crawling up her throat, no matter how hard she tried to push it down. “It makes sense.” 

He nodded once, tightly. 

They could hardly look each other in the eye. The room felt airless and Raven couldn’t wait to turn and run. And she did, walking out slowly, wishing him a good night before closing the door firmly behind her. It closed with finality. 

She'd be his and Bellamy would be hers. And Raven felt as if her fate was being stowed away in a metal box, never to be opened again. But it was for the the greater good. That's what she told herself, as anxiety knotted in the pit of her stomach. As her breathing became uneven. As she backed against the cool stone wall and sank to the floor, chest heaving. 

Breathe in, and out.

Breathe in, and out.

Breath in.

So much for young love. 

___


	3. Chapter 3

“The night isn’t dark; the world is dark.  
Stay with me a little longer.”  
— Louise Glück, “Departure”

 

___

 

They ate together that night. 

Raven figured it’d be rude not to invite Bellamy to dine with her. She dressed carefully, putting on her bracelets that wrapped around her forearms like so many snakes, and then a wine-colored dress that swished around her ankles. 

When she looked in the mirror, she saw herself glowing in the half-light.

Someone had once told Raven that she was the kind of girl you killed for. People saw the best in her. They saw the wide brown eyes and youthful face that screamed protect me, and something inside them would kneel and lay still.

Even Bellamy looked at her with something near reverence. 

“You look beautiful,” he said, the compliment rolling off his tongue easy as anything. He was just trying to set her at ease, most likely, but there was something genuine about everything he did. Looking at him, it was so hard to imagine Bellamy lying or cheating. It unsettled her. 

“Thank you, your majesty,” she said, leaning back and taking a good look at him. “You’re not terrible-looking yourself.”

He smiled, a dimple appearing on his cheek, and she figured that Bellamy was prettier than half the girls in Dorne. Which was really saying something, all things considered. 

“You don’t have to call me your majesty,” he said, “just Bellamy.” 

“Alright,” she agreed, “just Bellamy.”

Raven delicately carved off a slice of the roasted mutton in front of her, the flesh still pink in the middle, juice bubbling from the place her knife had been. All her meals were made right there in the castle. The meat cooked with mangoes and chili, the vegetable grown in their garden, most of it so spicy it could bring tears to your eyes. 

Here, poison flowed freely as wine, and no one could be near Raven’s food except for a couple of trusted servants. She glanced over and saw Bellamy beginning to sweat at the temples, cheekbones flushed red. He’d bitten into a hot pepper. 

Raven tried not to smile. 

Raven smiled down at her plate. 

He tipped back his goblet and drank, drank, drank. 

“How are you liking your stay in Sunspear?” she asked him. “I suppose there’s not much to remind you of home.” 

“It's like nothing I've ever seen before -- A whole citadel rising out of the desert, somehow not getting lost. You’re lucky,” Bellamy said, pausing for a moment, “your people adore you.”

“And yours don’t?”

“It’s not the same. They see you as a sister, a cousin, someone to protect. Like family.” Bellamy shook his head. “My people look at me and see a man in a crown, that’s all.”

“Then you must be a good leader,” said Raven, swirling her wine around the glass absently, “if your people respect you and fear you just a little, it means you’re doing your job well.” 

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Always am,” she said smoothly. 

Bellamy looked at Raven’s hands, curled around the stem of her goblet. Delicate little hands with whitish scars across the fingers and calluses where the hilt of her daggers rested.

“You carry yourself like a queen, Raven Martell,” he said, and there was something in his voice she couldn’t place. “Confidence looks good on you.”

She opened her mouth to correct him -- she was a princess, not a queen. And it hit Raven then, a jolt of realization. She would be his Queen Baratheon within the month, married in some big old stone Sept where everyone’s eyes were trained on her. Trapped there in the deep dark woods with a man she barely knew.

“Call me Raven,” she said, running a finger around the rim of her goblet, circling and circling until it began to sing. “Now that we’re friends and everything.”

“Alright, Raven,” Bellamy agreed, ignoring the sarcastic edge to her voice. Maybe that was for the best. 

They sat together with the silence stretching between them like spider silk, a comfortable sort of quiet that didn’t chafe. Raven was thankful that Bellamy didn’t need to fill the air with unnecessary chatter. 

Raven could hear singing from far away, her people’s voices carrying on the wind. They were singing a folk song about some warrior, someone with the sun tangled in their hair, someone who died with a laugh in their throat.

Bellamy listened carefully to the voices on the wind, chin resting on his hand. A breeze blew through the room, rustling Bellamy’s hair, pulling at her skirt. The sun had set outside the window, and she could see pinpricks of light all across the city. Little oil lamps on windowsills and bonfires lit in the middle of the street. 

The golden lights reflected in Bellamy’s eyes. Raven noticed the spattering of freckles across his nose -- he’d been kissed by the sun goddess, as the superstition went, he’d been chosen.

In that moment, the two of them sitting there, she felt a strange sense of calm. Raven looked out the window at her city with it’s mismatched houses and narrow little streets. 

This was her home. Nothing could take that away.

Raven glanced over at Bellamy. She wondered if he was good and kind. She wondered if the rumors were true, his sickly mother wasting away in a dark room, his bastard sister following close by. She wondered if he had a lover back home, some faceless girl who fit him better than she ever could. 

Raven wondered if she had made a grand miscalculation. 

Bellamy looked back at her, a trace of a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. 

It didn’t matter anymore, though. Whatever happened they’d face it together. 

______

 

Raven packed light. A trunk full of the essentials, things to remind her of home. A small vial of sandalwood oil. Black kajal to line her eyes with. Several dresses and a pair of trousers, two knives and a sword tucked into the silky folds of her skirts. A little wooden box lined with various poisons and toxins that she could mix as needed. Raven wouldn't feel safe without them.

She was ready to leave, two trunks and her hair braided away from her face.

Everything had happened so fast. 

Her mother planted a quick kiss to Raven's forehead, whispering "stay strong," as if Raven had ever had the choice to be anything but strong. As if her mother would miss her. 

Her cousin hugged her and gave Raven a tiny little knife that could be slipped into a sleeve, into a boot. 

Bellamy was waiting at the front gate. 

He almost smiled when he saw her and she felt tension rising in her gut, a great wave of crushing fear that she couldn't shake. 

They left just before dawn.

Her horse's hooves pounded beneath her. The wind whipped at Raven's hair, and when she turned to look over her shoulder she could see Sunspear growing smaller and smaller until it looked like a child's toy, until it looked like a pinprick of red stone, until it disappeared entirely into the horizon. 

The fear in Raven's gut shifted and dissipated. She just felt hollow.

But there were worse things to be. 

Raven kicked her horse faster, faster, until she was at the front of the pack.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s safe to speak here. / To call love by a name other than vengeance.  
― Mary Jo Bang, from “Electra Dreams,

 

__________

 

They rode all day, stopping only to rest the horses.

Raven’s legs grew stiff and her hair had come undone, wisps framing her face. She liked riding, though. When her horse was galloping at full speed, it felt like she was part of the wind and part of the desert. It felt like she could dissolve into the air.

They’d prepared a carriage for her, the inside padded and lined with soft linen. She’d refused it, favoring the open air and the taste of freedom. Bellamy’s men gave Raven odd looks, wondering what kind of princess wore trousers.

Bellamy was distant. He was the man on the horse, the man a few paces away, talking in a lowered voice with an older man who served as his advisor. One of Bellamy’s men gave Raven water and a few pieces of preserved rabbit meat to chew on.

They kept riding. Her horse’s hooves pounded into the sand, leaving indentations, and she felt every vibration, she felt the rolling of the sand dunes under her. Always shifting. Never the same. In a few days there would be no sign of their party. No sign of the king, or his men, or his conflicted little queen.

Nothing lasted forever.

___________

 

They made camp just before the sun slipped beneath the horizon. There were a handful of tents arranged in a loose circle, hers across from Bellamy’s. She laid down on her bedroll and tried to fall asleep. Eyes closed, then open. Staring at the rawhide ceiling of her tent, maybe thinking of home or thinking of nothing at all.

Raven was so tired she felt it in her bones.

But sleep wouldn’t come.

Her nerves seemed like they were on fire, tingling and burning beneath her skin, and her mind wouldn’t stop churning.

Everything was quiet.

When she was little, her father told Raven that if she was awake past midnight in the desert, if she listened carefully, she could hear the ghosts begin to whisper. He said their wandering souls wanted to speak to her. Raven couldn’t imagine why.

Raven stepped outside of her tent, the night air cool on her skin. She walked away from the camp. Over the nearest hill and beyond, shivering in her thin cotton nightdress.

The galaxy spread across the darkness like so much spilled milk. Stars congealed above her. It had been so long since Raven had stood in the middle of nowhere and gazed upwards at the cosmos, remembering for a moment how small she truly was.

“What do you see up there?”

She turned to see Bellamy walking towards her, no sword hanging from his belt, all of his bravado melted away. He was just a boy. Dark hair curling against his neck, falling into his eyes.

“Nothing,” Raven said decidedly. “Some people say they can see their futures and their ancestors in the stars, but I've never been able to.”

“Maybe it's for the best.” Bellamy came to stand beside her. “People tend to lose their mind when they think they can see into the future.”

Raven thought of Finn and his fingertips tracing the lines of her palm, his quiet promises of forever. They were just kids, naive and desperate. After Finn had passed away she felt empty, like he'd taken something from her and forgotten to give it back.

“You see that one?” Bellamy pointed towards the northern part of the sky. Her eyes followed the length of his arm, up and up and up until she saw the star glowing an eerie bluish-white. Bellamy was very close now, shoulders angled towards her. “That star is part of a constellation, the dancing woman.”

Raven gave him a strange look. “I’m supposed to see a dancing woman?”

“It’s a little abstract,” Bellamy admitted, laughing, “a long time ago, the First Men looked up and imagined figures in the sky and gave them stories. See? That bright star is in her belt, and then those are her arms, and her head. She’s dancing.”

To Raven it looked like a random assortment of stars, nothing more and nothing less, but she liked the way Bellamy’s eyes lit up when he talked about them.

His hand rested for a moment on Raven’s upper arm as he showed her another figure in the sky. Warm and steady. She acutely felt every place Bellamy touched her, his palm resting on the bare skin of her arm, the warmth of his breath against her neck.

It struck Raven then, how she couldn't bring herself to hate Bellamy, no matter how hard she tried. Another time, another place, where there was no bitterness and no obligations, she wondered if the two of them would find each other. If they would have been friends.

“Do you do this to every girl you meet? Take them stargazing?”

Bellamy looked amused. “Only the ones I really like.”

And, apparently, the ones he needed to advance himself politically.

But the stars were smiling down at her and Bellamy was radiating warmth beside her. Just the two of them standing atop the tallest dune, staring out over the dark landscape. The rebel King and his prickly little queen-to-be, like in the old stories. There wasn't room for Raven’s cynicism.

 


End file.
